ElkArte Community

Project Support => General ElkArte discussions => Topic started by: forumovod on August 12, 2020, 06:11:41 pm

Title: Is this project alive?
Post by: forumovod on August 12, 2020, 06:11:41 pm
Is this project alive? There are almost no new messages on the forum. Therefore it seems that the project is abandoned.
Title: Re: Is this project alive?
Post by: ahrasis on August 12, 2020, 09:09:49 pm
It's still alive though it's not kicking that much...
Title: Re: Is this project alive?
Post by: forumovod on August 13, 2020, 01:58:21 am
Here almost died as on SMF? What is the reason? 4 years ago, it was active here.
Title: Re: Is this project alive?
Post by: ahrasis on August 13, 2020, 03:25:02 am
I can see you made assumption after assumption, but what is your real intention anyway? Bored living in Covid 19 pandemic era? :P
Title: Re: Is this project alive?
Post by: badmonkey on August 13, 2020, 07:27:46 am
Maybe the elk site doesn't need much support since it works correctly out of the box! ;D
Title: Re: Is this project alive?
Post by: forumovod on August 13, 2020, 02:01:35 pm
Quote from: ahrasis – I can see you made assumption after assumption, but what is your real intention anyway? Bored living in Covid 19 pandemic era? :P

Your answers are very useful for attracting new users to ElkArte))
Title: Re: Is this project alive?
Post by: forumovod on August 13, 2020, 02:17:09 pm
Quote from: badmonkey – Maybe the elk site doesn't need much support since it works correctly out of the box! ;D

Usually, a dead project forum shows that there is no interest in the project from developers and users. It would be stupid to migrate from one dead project (SMF) to an alternative project (Elkarte) if it also died.
Title: Re: Is this project alive?
Post by: badmonkey on August 13, 2020, 05:52:24 pm
Grinning icons are usually indicative of a joke too. Seriously, I get what you're saying. On the plus, there's plenty of life here over the past couple days. 
Title: Re: Is this project alive?
Post by: forumovod on August 13, 2020, 07:43:11 pm
Quote from: badmonkey – Seriously, I get what you're saying. On the plus, there's plenty of life here over the past couple days.

Then I have another question.
As I understand it, Elkarte 1.1 is made in order not to wait for the final release of SMF 2.1. But what will the Elkarte team do when the final release of SMF 2.1 does appear and migration from SMF to Elkarte becomes irrelevant? Does the Elkarte team have a road map? Where can I read about it?
Title: Re: Is this project alive?
Post by: ahrasis on August 13, 2020, 08:34:44 pm
We are not SMF and don't really care about it. We also don't need people to come here and be bossy. If we are really dead then you are now getting responses from all the living dead. :P
Title: Re: Is this project alive?
Post by: forumovod on August 13, 2020, 08:42:56 pm
Quote from: ahrasis – We are not SMF and don't really care about it. We also don't need people to come here and be bossy. If we are really dead then you are now getting responses from all the living dead. :P

Can you refrain from your useless answers?
Title: Re: Is this project alive?
Post by: ahrasis on August 13, 2020, 08:44:21 pm
I will not unless you stop making assumptions and bad comments about this forum and the software. By the way, my answers are not useless.
Title: Re: Is this project alive?
Post by: forumovod on August 13, 2020, 08:57:33 pm
Quote from: ahrasis – I will not unless you stop making assumptions and bad comments about this forum and the software. By the way, my answers are not useless.

I came to this forum and didn't see any activity over the past year. Is this called a live forum?
Title: Re: Is this project alive?
Post by: emanuele on August 15, 2020, 12:48:47 pm
Quote from: forumovod – As I understand it, Elkarte 1.1 is made in order not to wait for the final release of SMF 2.1.
hmm... no.
ElkArte was made because a group of people decided the way SMF was developing (and the environment, at least for me) was not of their liking.
Elk development has nothing to do with SMF.

Quote from: forumovod – Does the Elkarte team have a road map? Where can I read about it?
Well, considering the current release schedule, no, I don't have a road map.
I have some personal goals, if I will be able to achieve them, that's an entirely different story.

Quote from: forumovod – I came to this forum and didn't see any activity over the past year. Is this called a live forum?
The activity is low. No reason to say the project is thriving. We followed a reasonable release schedule for as long as we've been able to, with 2.0 I myself probably asked too much and pushed some more code changes than what was reasonable [1].
I would like to push at least another bunch of code before releasing a 1st beta, I hoped I could get some time to focus last week when I was on holiday, but... there always is something to do in RL, dang!, so I had to postpone it.
My personal goal would be to have some kind of beta [2]. Is it realistic? Yes. Will it happen? Time will tell.
Dreams are a bad thing in software development.
and beta here tends to mean feature freeze, at least in terms of database changes, that is already quite a bit of hassles less, because you can upgrade to any further release without having to run any code.
Title: Re: Is this project alive?
Post by: forumovod on August 15, 2020, 06:04:35 pm
emanuele
Thank you for the full answer.
I installed Elkarte on a new project. If the experiment is successful, I will think about migrating my other forums from SMF 2.0 to Elkarte. Because I can't wait 10 years for the final release of SMF 2.1 to update my sites.

I hope you understand why I am concerned about the low activity on this support forum.
Title: Re: Is this project alive?
Post by: Zioclive on September 04, 2020, 05:38:29 pm
Even on my forum (based on Elkarte 1.6) there's less activity if compared to 3 years ago. I assume it's a general trend.
Nevertheless I'm absolutely happy  of my migration from SMF to ELK.
Title: Re: Is this project alive?
Post by: forumovod on September 04, 2020, 07:13:36 pm
Quote from: Zioclive – Nevertheless I'm absolutely happy  of my migration from SMF to ELK.

If SMF soon has the final version 2.1, and ELK is stuck on version 1.1, there will be no reason to migrate from SMF to ELK.
News on SMF: https://www.simplemachines.org/community/index.php?topic=574576.0
Title: Re: Is this project alive?
Post by: Antechinus on September 04, 2020, 09:43:32 pm
It is not just a question of version numbers. Elk 1.1 is as advanced as SMF 2.1, because Elk 1.0 was forked from SMF 2.1 Alpha and then finished by the Elk team. Basically, Elk got to a final version 6 years earlier, from the same starting point. It has been developed further since then.
Title: Re: Is this project alive?
Post by: forumovod on September 06, 2020, 01:15:57 am
Quote from: Antechinus – It is not just a question of version numbers. Elk 1.1 is as advanced as SMF 2.1, because Elk 1.0 was forked from SMF 2.1 Alpha and then finished by the Elk team. Basically, Elk got to a final version 6 years earlier, from the same starting point. It has been developed further since then.

My post was not about comparing SMF and ELK, but about possible migration from the SMF to ELK.
Why migrate from SMF to ELK if they will soon become similar. There will be no reason to do this.
Title: Re: Is this project alive?
Post by: badmonkey on September 06, 2020, 08:37:26 am
Quote from: forumovod –
Quote from: Antechinus – It is not just a question of version numbers. Elk 1.1 is as advanced as SMF 2.1, because Elk 1.0 was forked from SMF 2.1 Alpha and then finished by the Elk team. Basically, Elk got to a final version 6 years earlier, from the same starting point. It has been developed further since then.
  
My post was not about comparing SMF and ELK, but about possible migration from the SMF to ELK.
Why migrate from SMF to ELK if they will soon become similar. There will be no reason to do this.
 
 They won't be similar. For starters, elk has substantially cleaner code and file arrangement. Then there is support. People aren't essentially called stupid for asking basic questions here. Expanding on that, devs actually listen to user suggestion here, i.e. the other current thread regarding index page layout. Anyone can feel free to make those statements over on SMF. Let us know how that goes. Let alone the fact one of the elk leadership posed the question here. Don't forget mods. elk mods are mostly hook based. In fact most are purely hook based. How many can SMF claim are purely hook based? 

These are not trivial items.
Title: Re: Is this project alive?
Post by: ahrasis on September 06, 2020, 08:56:33 am
Where is that bad karma or dislike feature? I simply couldn't find it to mark certain posts in here... :P
Title: Re: Is this project alive?
Post by: Antechinus on September 06, 2020, 04:59:57 pm
Quote from: forumovod – My post was not about comparing SMF and ELK, but about possible migration from the SMF to ELK.
Why migrate from SMF to ELK if they will soon become similar. There will be no reason to do this.
You could say the same about most forum software. They all do much the same thing, and they're all pretty good at it. It comes down to personal preference.

I've been looking at both SMF 2.1 and Elk lately, because I'm thinking of switching a small site from phpBB to something else. With either SMF or Elk I can write just about any interface code I'll be wanting to write, so for me it will probably come down to which converter behaves the best. Both SMF and Elk advertise that they have awesome converters that make things easy for converting from phpBB, but in reality neither have been updated for some time and neither works all that well [1]. So I'll have to set up three test installations and find out which one works best, and how to fix it.

Anyway, converters aside, Elk's code base is currently in a better state than that of SMF 2.1. At this stage I don't know how long SMF 2.1 will take to get cleaned up and finished.

Quote from: badmonkey – They won't be similar. For starters, elk has substantially cleaner code and file arrangement. Then there is support. People aren't essentially called stupid for asking basic questions here.
Support is pretty good at SMF. I started there as a complete n00b (I'd never heard of PHP or CSS) and found that as long as you make some attempt to not be stupid, and have some patience, things go quite well. Yes, some of them can be a bit gnarly sometimes (and you rapidly learn their personalities) but even the apparently gnarly ones are basically decent people once you get to know them. It probably helps that I am perfectly capable of being thoroughly gnarly myself. :D

Quote from: badmonkey – Don't forget mods. elk mods are mostly hook based. In fact most are purely hook based. How many can SMF claim are purely hook based?

These are not trivial items.
TBH I've found that hook-based mods can be as much of a PITA as the old style mods. Like any mods, they're all fine if you want exactly what the author wrote, and if you don't install any other mods that might conflict with them.

ETA: Oh the other point is PHP support. Both Elk 1.1 and SMF 2.0 will only run error-free up to PHP 7.2, and of course 7.2 is EOL at the end of November this year. Apparently 2.0.18 will be fine with anything up to PHP 7.4. I read the other day that, although the repo is not public, the code has already been sorted. As far as I know that puts SMF 2.0 ahead of Elk 1.1 in terms of PHP versions, which is something to consider.
(same applies to various converters to phpBB)
Title: Re: Is this project alive?
Post by: forumovod on September 06, 2020, 06:25:00 pm
Quote from: badmonkey – Expanding on that, devs actually listen to user suggestion here, i.e. the other current thread regarding index page layout.

It's good.
But for migrating from SMF to ELK, it's important that Elk doesn't get stuck on version 1.1. My post was about this.
Is the next version of ELK being developed?
Title: Re: Is this project alive?
Post by: badmonkey on September 06, 2020, 09:05:02 pm
Quote from: Antechinus –
Quote from: forumovod – My post was not about comparing SMF and ELK, but about possible migration from the SMF to ELK.
Why migrate from SMF to ELK if they will soon become similar. There will be no reason to do this.
  You could say the same about most forum software. They all do much the same thing, and they're all pretty good at it. It comes down to personal preference.

I've been looking at both SMF 2.1 and Elk lately, because I'm thinking of switching a small site from phpBB to something else. With either SMF or Elk I can write just about any interface code I'll be wanting to write, so for me it will probably come down to which converter behaves the best. Both SMF and Elk advertise that they have awesome converters that make things easy for converting from phpBB, but in reality neither have been updated for some time and neither works all that well [1]. So I'll have to set up three test installations and find out which one works best, and how to fix it.

Anyway, converters aside, Elk's code base is currently in a better state than that of SMF 2.1. At this stage I don't know how long SMF 2.1 will take to get cleaned up and finished.

Quote from: badmonkey – They won't be similar. For starters, elk has substantially cleaner code and file arrangement. Then there is support. People aren't essentially called stupid for asking basic questions here.
  Support is pretty good at SMF. I started there as a complete n00b (I'd never heard of PHP or CSS) and found that as long as you make some attempt to not be stupid, and have some patience, things go quite well. Yes, some of them can be a bit gnarly sometimes (and you rapidly learn their personalities) but even the apparently gnarly ones are basically decent people once you get to know them. It probably helps that I am perfectly capable of being thoroughly gnarly myself. :D

Quote from: badmonkey – Don't forget mods. elk mods are mostly hook based. In fact most are purely hook based. How many can SMF claim are purely hook based?

These are not trivial items.
  TBH I've found that hook-based mods can be as much of a PITA as the old style mods. Like any mods, they're all fine if you want exactly what the author wrote, and if you don't install any other mods that might conflict with them.

ETA: Oh the other point is PHP support. Both Elk 1.1 and SMF 2.0 will only run error-free up to PHP 7.2, and of course 7.2 is EOL at the end of November this year. Apparently 2.0.18 will be fine with anything up to PHP 7.4. I read the other day that, although the repo is not public, the code has already been sorted. As far as I know that puts SMF 2.0 ahead of Elk 1.1 in terms of PHP versions, which is something to consider.
 
 We will have to disagree on that. I've witnessed too much beratement over there. I've even been the subject. Frankly it was the primary reason for coming here. The arrogance from some individuals oozes. 
(same applies to various converters to phpBB)
Title: Re: Is this project alive?
Post by: forumovod on September 06, 2020, 10:06:52 pm
Quote from: badmonkey –
Quote from: Antechinus –
Quote from: forumovod – My post was not about comparing SMF and ELK, but about possible migration from the SMF to ELK.
Why migrate from SMF to ELK if they will soon become similar. There will be no reason to do this.
  You could say the same about most forum software. They all do much the same thing, and they're all pretty good at it. It comes down to personal preference.

I've been looking at both SMF 2.1 and Elk lately, because I'm thinking of switching a small site from phpBB to something else. With either SMF or Elk I can write just about any interface code I'll be wanting to write, so for me it will probably come down to which converter behaves the best. Both SMF and Elk advertise that they have awesome converters that make things easy for converting from phpBB, but in reality neither have been updated for some time and neither works all that well [1]. So I'll have to set up three test installations and find out which one works best, and how to fix it.

Anyway, converters aside, Elk's code base is currently in a better state than that of SMF 2.1. At this stage I don't know how long SMF 2.1 will take to get cleaned up and finished.

Quote from: badmonkey – They won't be similar. For starters, elk has substantially cleaner code and file arrangement. Then there is support. People aren't essentially called stupid for asking basic questions here.
  Support is pretty good at SMF. I started there as a complete n00b (I'd never heard of PHP or CSS) and found that as long as you make some attempt to not be stupid, and have some patience, things go quite well. Yes, some of them can be a bit gnarly sometimes (and you rapidly learn their personalities) but even the apparently gnarly ones are basically decent people once you get to know them. It probably helps that I am perfectly capable of being thoroughly gnarly myself. :D

Quote from: badmonkey – Don't forget mods. elk mods are mostly hook based. In fact most are purely hook based. How many can SMF claim are purely hook based?

These are not trivial items.
  TBH I've found that hook-based mods can be as much of a PITA as the old style mods. Like any mods, they're all fine if you want exactly what the author wrote, and if you don't install any other mods that might conflict with them.

ETA: Oh the other point is PHP support. Both Elk 1.1 and SMF 2.0 will only run error-free up to PHP 7.2, and of course 7.2 is EOL at the end of November this year. Apparently 2.0.18 will be fine with anything up to PHP 7.4. I read the other day that, although the repo is not public, the code has already been sorted. As far as I know that puts SMF 2.0 ahead of Elk 1.1 in terms of PHP versions, which is something to consider.

 We will have to disagree on that. I've witnessed too much beratement over there. I've even been the subject. Frankly it was the primary reason for coming here. The arrogance from some individuals oozes.

Why is there no quotation of the selected text? The smf 2.1 has this)
(same applies to various converters to phpBB)
Title: Re: Is this project alive?
Post by: Antechinus on September 07, 2020, 12:20:59 am
You can split quotes at the cursor, which is pretty handy. But I agree quoting only selected text would be useful too.
Title: Re: Is this project alive?
Post by: radu81 on September 11, 2020, 10:35:19 am
Quote from: forumovod – Why is there no quotation of the selected text? The smf 2.1 has this)
It is available as add-on
 https://www.elkarte.net/community/index.php?topic=3456.0
Title: Re: Is this project alive?
Post by: Arantor on September 13, 2020, 07:44:28 am
I hope this project is alive. The future needs it.
Title: Re: Is this project alive?
Post by: Antechinus on September 13, 2020, 05:47:49 pm
I don't think it's dead, but it is a bit worrying that the news fader is still advertising the 1.0 branch, which as far as I know has been EOL for years. I know it also advertises 1.1.6, but I do wonder about the 1.0 thing.
Title: Re: Is this project alive?
Post by: forumovod on September 14, 2020, 01:16:59 am
Quote from: radu81 – It is available as add-on
 https://www.elkarte.net/community/index.php?topic=3456.0

Thanks. The addon installed.
Title: Re: Is this project alive?
Post by: emanuele on September 16, 2020, 02:27:22 pm
I'm closer to be a zombie than 3/4 years ago, but when I get there I'll be immortal, so I'll not have any issue with supporting anything I want for as long as I want. :D :P
Title: Re: Is this project alive?
Post by: Bloc on October 25, 2020, 10:26:53 am
Quote from: badmonkey –
 We will have to disagree on that. I've witnessed too much beratement over there. I've even been the subject. Frankly it was the primary reason for coming here. The arrogance from some individuals oozes.

Indeed, its toxic at times - which makes you think long and hard before trying to voicing an opinion ever again..sadly.

Never found this site to be that though. :)
Title: Re: Is this project alive?
Post by: Steeley on October 26, 2020, 01:50:42 pm
Quote from: Arantor – I hope this project is alive. The future needs it.

Indeed.... just for the record, here's what brought me to ElkArte.. (long story told short)

Almost 20 years ago, a yahoo group was set up for a bunch of military veterans. The group owner also set up a website to support that community. A few years later he passed away. The yahoo group continued on, the website passed to his brother, who owns it but doesn't maintain it.  A few years ago Yahoo was purchased by Sprint.  I saw the writing on the wall, and set up my own server to support the group, not subject to the whims of others not directly related to the community. When Yahoo announced last year it was shutting down the Group forums (and converting to a mail list) I archived the group, and set out to replicate the Yahoo forum on my server.
I found one forum package that ostensibly supported the Yahoo group's mail-list format, and set about configuring that, and massaging the archived mails for import. Alas, I discovered an incompatibility with the Yahoo list emails and the software that rendered the mail-list support functionality basically useless. I spent much time trying to identify the problem.
About then, a few weeks ago Sprint/Yahoo announced it was shutting down the distribution lists Dec 15th.
This eliminated the constraint for that forum package, and I immediately abandoned that package and looked for another..

That brought me to ElkArte...  My first step was to rapidly get a Forum set up and mail functioning properly. It's now set up (sweet! much easier than that other package), and I'm working through a few mail configuration issues. Once those are solved, I'll migrate the existing mail-list users to the new ElkArte-based forum on my server.

Then, after everyone is settled in and comfy, I'll work on bringing in all the posts from the earlier Yahoo group and from the distribution list.

Point being... there are a LOT of folks out there that are former Yahoo Group owners (Yahoo claimed 10 million users in tens of thousands of groups) and those groups and members were "kicked into the life boat" last year, that are now about to be "abandoned at sea". I know of many that, like me, have been desperately looking for a way to move their groups to another platform. Some of them will inevitably find their way to ElkArte, especially if I succeed in a full migration of my group and the archives. 

There are a few developers that are working on this effort using $$ hosts, which, from my point of view, is jumping from the frying pan into the fire - not only are those communities still subject to the whims of unrelated hosts, but now they're paying for the privilege (whereas Yahoo Groups were "free", but for the ad-views). If revenue is the goal, ElkArte does support subscriptions (in my case, that is not my interest, but it's there as an incentive for those that are monetarily driven..).

In short, it may take awhile, but there IS demand for forums that other social media platforms will not satisfy with their current revenue models that I believe will drive ElkArte growth in the future. I may well be just the first of many to follow.

Stay "tooned"...

-Steeley
Title: Re: Is this project alive?
Post by: Spuds on October 26, 2020, 09:43:45 pm
I've done the Yahoo to forum moves in the past, the pain was worth it ;)

I've just not had much time to work on elkarte this year, but this has not been a normal year for anyone.  I hope to get back to things "soon" ... 

Really 1.1.7 should also be finalized soon, there are a lot of good updates in there, and that would likely be close to the end of 1.1 updates with most future effort on 2.0  Not saying there would not be a 1.1.8 but it would be be a maintenance type of release if it happened IMO
Title: Re: Is this project alive?
Post by: Antechinus on October 26, 2020, 09:46:58 pm
Oh. Well, if you're thinking of doing a 1.1.7 soon I should go through the 1.1.6 CSS some more. I'm sure I can find more nifty ways to slow down 1.1.7 for you. :D